Blind Spots
How did you get here? Wherever “here” might be for you.
In work and in life, we come to where we are, or “here” because of the learnings of our past and the learnings we desire in our future. By exhibiting certain behaviors we’ve shown our competence in starting organizations, or being an integral part of one. In the best of circumstances, we seek out challenges that are aligned with our goals that push us in the ways we seek to grow. With any luck, we’ll learn something about ourselves that goes deeper than just knowing how to negotiate our next term sheet.
In whatever endeavor we find ourselves in, there’s an inherent tension in growth. If we’ve signed up for this journey, to go where we have not yet been, the tension becomes pronounced. Our competencies and well-worn ways of getting things done reaches an upper limit where we can no longer see what’s coming around the corner.
“One is often unconsciously surrounded by one’s own personal reality”
― Pawan Mishra
One of the greatest risks we can carry as leaders is to leave the way we see the world unexamined. If we continue forward without understanding where our knowledge gaps are, we will be ill-equipped when our organizations grow beyond where we’ve been. In order to grow our own personal reality, and expand the list of choices we have available requires exposure to new information, perspectives, and beliefs that are different from our own. One of the core elements in enhancing our leadership and building resilience is the sharing of experiences with others. In doing so we help to shine a light on places that for others are dark, and in return receive the same illumination.
One of our favorite poems at Reboot is For a Leader, by John O’Donohue (shared below in its’ entirety). I want to highlight a line from that poem I always make sure to read twice:
“May you have good friends
To mirror your blind spots.”
There’s one last step of course, after our blind spots have been revealed, which is to step through the threshold of uncertainty into a place we’ve not been before. To choose a new way whose outcome is not predetermined and yet includes within it a greater possibility of growth for ourselves and those alongside us.
“For A Leader” by John O’Donohue
May you have the grace and wisdom
To act kindly, learning
To distinguish between what is
Personal and what is not.
May you be hospitable to criticism.
May you never put yourself at the center of things.
May you act not from arrogance but out of service.
May you work on yourself,
Building up and refining the ways of your mind.
May those who work for you know
You see and respect them.
May you learn to cultivate the art of presence
In order to engage with those who meet you.
When someone fails or disappoints you,
May the graciousness with which you engage
Be their stairway to renewal and refinement.
May you treasure the gifts of the mind
Through reading and creative thinking
So that you continue as a servant of the frontier
Where the new will draw its enrichment from the
old,
And may you never become a functionary.
May you know the wisdom of deep listening,
The healing of wholesome words,
The encouragement of the appreciative gaze,
The decorum of held dignity,
The springtime edge of the bleak question.
May you have a mind that loves frontiers
So that you can evoke the bright fields
That lie beyond the view of the regular eye.
May you have good friends
To mirror your blind spots.
May leadership be for you
A true adventure of growth.
